Cinderella is a story about building a future from the ashes of the past. Neglected Cinderella, defined by her unhappy childhood, finds a new tomorrow. Prokofiev composed his ballet early in the second world war, and the score holds a load of grief and grotesque scrabble as well as fantasy. Listen to the melancholy overture, and you might not peg this for a romcom.
Alexei Ratmansky honours both fear and fun in his 2013 production for Australian Ballet (following an earlier version for the Mariinsky), set in Prokofiev’s own age of anxiety. Cinderella and her stepfamily are holed up in a dilapidated theatre. Her father makes a brief shamefaced appearance in search of vodka, and, unlike Frederick Ashton’s classic panto-inflected production, Ratmansky casts women as the stepsisters and includes their alarming, short-fuse mother (Amy Harris, glamorous but scissor-kicking across the stage in a tantrum). Her daughters – one lanky, one stumpy – aren’t monsters, just under-loved gawks always one ill-judged turn from collapse.
Delicious designs by Jérôme Kaplan nod to surrealist icons – Schiaparelli’s shoe hat, Dalí and Man Ray. The fairy godmother is a practical Nanny McPhee figure in a tall bowler hat, and rather than summoning fairies to transform Cinderella, she commands a distracting squadron of planets. In a plum-marbled palace, the snooty court ladies wear chic tuxedos in chocolate and pistachio tones for their cool, slouchy moves. (The Australian Ballet ensemble is a treat, always winningly engaged.) Cinders, however, goes to the ball in a luscious New Look frock, gleaming in gilt and pearl.
In a busy production, Cinderella herself can seem a wallflower, but Ratmansky makes her an original, resilient heroine. The sweet, sad oval of Leanne Stojmenov’s face registers in softly expansive solos, where tomboyish vigour and exuberant turns are cut with hands craving a hero to cradle, a mother to hug. When she makes it to the palace, she luxuriates in the space – but Stojmenov will still smile at herself, even in full swoon with the prince.
Princes – they’re always a problem. This one (Kevin Jackson) arrives dazzling in a white silk suit – big jumps, big smile. He spins the ladies and shoves them away; he has a lot of growing up to do. It’s characteristically insightful of Ratmansky to realise he needs rescuing even more than Cinders does: when they dance, she makes him nicer, less guarded, more than a well-dressed grin. Stojmenov and Jackson hold tiny pauses as they dance, as if registering something momentous.
Which makes it all the more disappointing when, after midnight strikes, and Cinders is returned to rags, the Prince sweeps past her with nary a glance. Ratmansky’s ample version of the no-filler score – mined for all its uncanny detail by conductor Nicolette Fraillon – has him wander the world and resist tempters in properly alluring frocks, until he’s ready to appreciate the real Cinderella. Their final pas de deux is shimmeringly solemn, a moment extended as long as possible. This could just be what happy ever after looks like.
• Australian Ballet’s Cinderella will be screened by Cinema Live in cinemas on 23 November, The Sleeping Beauty on 4 October 2016 and Coppélia on 19 April 2017.
